White House and FCC should leave phone unlocking alone

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Earlier this year, it became illegal to unlock your phone without your carrier’s consent. As expected, this angered many mobile phone users, and eventually resulted in a petition with 100,000 signatures on the White House petition site, We The People. A White House representative responded to the petition, and stated that the administration feels unlocking a phone should be legal. The FCC joined in and mirrored this sentiment. However, the White House and FCC should back right off.

It’s important to note that I am all for phones being able to be unlocked. Tangentially related to that, I’m also all for homebrew — assuming it isn’t used to pirate software — and I’m not a fan of region-locked game consoles. When the White House and FCC are going to prevent phone carriers from locking their own products, though, I’m not a fan, even though the desires of the FCC and White House are in line with my own.

In October of last year, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act was updated to make phone unlocking illegal, which seemed like an excessive measure. Logically it should be a carrier’s responsibility to govern over the state of its phones. Rather than paying the full price of the phone, it is common practice for a carrier to offer a significant discount if you sign up for a contract. Most carriers would unlock your phone if you purchased it at full price without a contract, and it was common practice for phones to become unlocked after a contract ran out.

However, the DMCA update prevented users from taking advantage of carrier subsidies when purchasing a phone. If, for example, a phone was an exclusive piece of hardware to a carrier (and thus, locked), but you preferred a different carrier, you could sign up for a contract, get the phone at a discount, then terminate your contract (through a few methods, such as paying a termination fee or not paying your bill). After the contract was over, you could unlock your exclusive phone and take it where you please, having obtained it with that initial significant discount. The DMCA update prevented customers from taking advantage of that system, but it had unfortunate side effects, such as crippling the third-party resale market and massively inflating the cost of international roaming.

The DMCA should not have made unlocking phones a federal crime to begin with. Just a few months after that happened, though, White House and FCC representatives stated that unlocking phones should be legal, and they would look into revising the DMCA update. The White House representative stated that the government feels phones should be able to be unlocked after a contract is up, plain and simple, with no mention of the carrier subsidy. The FCC stated that it is looking into preserving the “consumer’s ability to unlock their mobile phones.” While those sentiments could lead to results any phone customer can agree with, those two governing bodies should knock it off and stay out of it. Why? Because whether or not you agree with the carriers’ practice of not allowing phones to be unlocked, carriers weren’t doing anything illegal.

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jason parks

IM pretty sure the news article on CNN stated:

“The Obama administration would support a range of approaches to addressing this issue, including narrow legislative fixes in the telecommunications space that make it clear: neither criminal law nor technological locks should prevent consumers from switching carriers when they are no longer bound by a service agreement or other obligation,” Edelman wrote.

Key words NO LONGER BOUND BY A SERVICE AGREEMENT

wontfly

Mr. Planke is either a shill/lobbyist for the telecommunication industry or an uber capitalist for whom corporate interests – as in profits – trump all else.

In the good old days before the wonderful technology revolution, telephones companies had evolved to the point that a telephone for your landline could be purchased cheaply from the company itself or at your local Radio Shack, Target, KMart, etc. AND kept forever at no additional charge by said company.

One also was not charged by the minute, for both the calls you made and the calls made to you, even if they were unwanted calls or wrong numbers. Today, if you do not sign up for the exhorbitant unlimited plans, you find yourself fretting about the plan minutes ticking away while you are constantly waiting on hold for numerous necessary calls to doctors, lawyers and Indian Chiefs.

The Telecommunication Act of 1996, ostensibly meant, among other things, to foster competition was instead a monstrously corrupt implement to allow for just the opposite both in the telephone and cable television industries which now make immense profits for less than a handful of giant corporations which continue to appropriate a greater percentage of the market for themselves, exactly like what occurred with the de-regulation of the financial industry.

disqus_YBNn84hfhz

and just like, i’m unsubscribing from extremetech newsfeed.

http://www.facebook.com/wjdavis0 Bill Davis

I don’t grasp how you can argue that the government deciding to change the laws to prevent something (make it illegal) is or should be somehow influenced by people/corporations that were doing it when it was legal… “Oh, the government shouldn’t get involved when they are killing people, after all it isn’t illegal, how can they make a law against it when what they are doing isn’t illegal?”… Are you willfully ignorant or just trying desperately to get a job as PR for some big phone company?

GetEdumated

Yeah, I thought that part was retarded too. If this guy was alive during Lincoln’s presidency, he would be arguing that the government shouldn’t get involved because the slave owners aren’t doing anything (currently) illegal.

While I certainly agree that unlocking phones should never be considered illegal, the problem with the rest of your reasoning is that it prevents total consumer ownership of the purchased product.

Assuming the contracted monetary obligations are fulfilled by both parties, your suggestion that we leave it up to the companies to arbitrarily decide which phones get unlocked, or which ones don’t, would essentially allow the companies to maintain ETERNAL part-ownership of the devices that WE own… and that is simply not acceptable.

I actually consider this issue an extension of Fair Use regulations and laws. Once a phone has been completely paid for and has therefore become the property of the purchaser, said purchaser should be allowed to use it as THEY see fit — NOT as the original seller sees fit.

Again, once a phone has been fully paid for — either through the completion of a contract or via ETF — that entire phone belongs to the buyer, not the seller.

The previous owner of a car is not allowed to dictate when and where I can drive it. Phones and other computing equipment are no different.

Therefore, if it requires some form of regulation or law to prevent sellers from crippling our devices AFTER they’re fully paid for, then so be it. There is simply no excuse for granting the sellers additional control over the devices at that time…

Joel Hruska

I really, really can’t agree with this. It’s terrible logic.You’re acknowledging that the DMCA warped the free market’s application of this feature on the one hand, but you try to carve out a position between repealing the DMCA on the one hand, and mandated phone unlocking on the other. It doesn’t work well.

Absent the DMCA (or any piece of equivalent legislation) you could argue that phone unlocking becomes a free market issue. So the government should repeal the DMCA.But you write that unlocking a phone should be considered a “civil offense.” That’s still government intervention.

Finally, I have to agree with people who are stating that the problem with phone locks is that I never OWN the device in question. If AT&T or Verizon wants an agreement whereupon I agree to a two-year phone lock in exchange for a device subsidy, that’s one thing. Arguing that a piddling subsidy guarantees them phone control forever is something else entirely.

Krezyle

“You may point out that the practice of not allowing phones to be unlocked is quite monopolistic…”

This idea is primarily where the confusion arises… It isn’t necessarily that the mobile phone industry, as a whole, is practicing a monopolistic idea by preventing their phones from being unlocked, it’s that as an industry monopoly with very few smaller carrier options, this feature reduces competition by preventing actual ownership of hardware. In Europe, companies often don’t subsidize phones at all. As a result, the rate you pay per month is typically less than the United States. Is that to say that Europeans actually posses any more legal ownership of their phones than Americans?

The wireless telecommunications industry has companies that exist as major monopolies already, which is why issues exist with activity such as Cingular joining AT&T, and a Sprint/Nextel merger. It isn’t that locking their phones makes them monopolistic, rather that already monopolistic companies are creating barriers to entry for smaller market carries that require common hardware to create competition. This is a byproduct of publicly traded companies with an obligation to stock holders, but we shouldn’t let that discount the fact that these companies still have a responsiblity to consumers in a market where few alternative options exist for the majority of Americans. One would hope that these companies would self regulate and competition would be strong, but typically the opposite tends to occur. Making sure active competition occurs and flourishes isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s an anti-monopolistic moral imperative.

http://www.facebook.com/tito.john.73 Tito John

I’m still not sure exactly what all the fuss is about, but I don’t think Mr. Planke brings much to the table.

Like most of the commentators, I don’t have a serious problem with phones being locked during a contract period, although I appreciate the fact that T-Mobile unlocked mine a few years ago before I traveled overseas. But I’ve also read that several carriers have responded to the controversy by saying, “But we DO unlock phones after the contract is up!” If that’s true, we’re talking about a hypothetical problem only.

The other point is that we are not talking about a carrier subsidy so you can buy a phone cheaply. We’re talking about consumer credit. You put money down on a phone and the carrier gets the rest during a two-year contract period. Let’s hypothesize that a carrier offered you a phone incapable of being unlocked and offered it at a low price that reflected lower manufacturing costs. That’s fine; it’s the market operating. But if the carrier also charged you the difference between that phone and the cost of a fully functional phone in monthly charges over the contract period, that would be a problem for me. I’m paying the full price of a phone in the end, and I should end up with a fully functional — i.e., unlocked — one at the end of the contract period.

Thomas Wells

Totally agree, this guy is on someones (read:Telecommunications) payroll. heck I even tried to read the whole thing with an open mind, didn’t work. This is garbage.

http://twitter.com/Dan82904 Dan Abrams

Ditto

SAL_e

Mr. Plafke said: “Perhaps a step in the right direction would be to remove the criminal offense, but allow carriers to include a clause in their contracts that state by purchasing a contract-discounted phone, the user agrees never to unlock their phone. Sure, that sucks for consumers, but it’s totally legal, and absolutely fair, and at least wouldn’t result in a federal crime. “

BS. Carrier’s contract is written by a small army of lawyers, who are working for the carrier, and transfer any risk, obligations and responsibilities to the Joe (the consumer) without a single clause to protect the consumer. Also is written in language that most lawyers and judges will have trouble understanding. And in the most cases any dispute will be tried by arbitrator, who also is paid and selected by the carrier. And you call that ‘absolutely fair’?!

It is as fair as ‘fair duel’ in where you are allow to participate with pocket knife, while I can bring a full automatic rifle like AK-47 and the distance between us is more then 10 ft.

keenox

Phone unlocking should be completely legal. For example, here in Romania, after your contract expires, you have the right to ask your carrier to unlock your phone. This is completely fair, as the carrier will charge you more for the monthly bill because of your initial discount. Actually they are making profit from that “discount”.

http://www.facebook.com/tito.john.73 Tito John

After thinking a little more about this question, I wonder: What’s the basic problem?

I buy a phone with a two-year contract. I ask the carrier to unlock the phone.

I’m still on contract, and if I pay it off early, the carrier is going to get its subsidy back. The contract buyout price is stiff.

If I don’t buy out of the contract and stiff the original carrier, is another carrier going to take me on? Prepaid only, maybe. Otherwise, who would extend credit (postpay) to somebody that welched on an earlier deal?

Or maybe carriers just don’t care if you have a bad rep with somebody else?

Daniel McClung

The government isn’t talking about making it illegal to lock phones. They’re talking about making it not illegal to unlock phones. There’s an enormous difference there. You’re arguing against DEregulation, which is the exact opposite of the government meddling you claim to be against.

andrew__des_moines

This flawed logic could be extended to mean that all property sold may remain under the seller’s authority for all time. That being said, the FCC could force carriers to use specific language such as “rent” or “lease” when advertising phones unless they contractually release all rights to the phone at the termination time of the contract.

http://www.cardinalphoto.com David Cardinal

Andrew–You may be onto something with the notion of leasing. If one could either _buy_ a phone (and truly own and control it) or _lease_ a phone for some lower price with strings attached — then at the end of the lease either keep it (possibly with some residual value transaction to settle up) or return it, then this whole discussion might at least move to the realm of contracts, contract law, and consumer protections related to them, rather than being in this weird, misfit realm of copyright (which really shouldn’t even be in the picture, after all nothing is actually being copied!) and criminal law (which is absurd for a ton of reasons).

Christopher Cotton

You pay a discounted price for the phone on contract and your obligated to pay that contract or pay a fee to break it earlier…dont pay the fee or the contract like everything else it can got to a collection agency, and ruin your god damn credit…

That being said when I go buy a car I sign up for a loan and im forced into insurance for the full coverage while I have that loan, but hey when I get done with my loan I can go with the minimal coverage(because of state law then and not the loan) and do as I want with the vehicle….

Now with cellphones I can pay for the phone OUTRIGHT for the full amount, and STILL not be able to unlock my phone LEGALLY with this new system. I have no contract and I spen 600+ dollars on the note ii to be able to take it with me to any carrier i wanted with no contract. ATT refused to unlock it before the law changed because my contact from a PREVIOUS phone wasnt up yet….So tell me why “protecting” these companies that make minor changes to internationl versions of phones claim its there own special phone and use that as a excuse to force you to stay as there customer while fucking you every month on your bill with charges for shit you dont even use?

I’m gonna end my ramble wit this…my contract expired on Feb 25th. I’m now a proud customer of net10 paying $50 a month for 2 gb of data, unlimited talk and text instead of the $102 for Att 3gb, 1000 messages, and 400 minutes a month…….So yea fuck the carriers in my opinion if they are going to screw the customers i say let the goverment screw them over as well.

RedDog

After reading the first couple of paragraphs, it became obvious that this guys is working for the phone companies.

Move along, nothing to see here.

Matt

Your argument also fails to account for the fact that the “monopoly” carriers (and manufacturers) vastly inflate the retail prices of cellphones. A brand new 10″ Galaxy or Asus 32Gb tablet RETAILS for $400, but a 4″ Galaxy or HTC 2 Gb phone sells for $600? Do you really believe that phones cost MORE to manufacture than tablets? The only REAL solution is for the FCC to finally do its job, impose STANDARDS on the cellphone industry, and force all carriers to accept any phone no matter where it was purchased, just like they once did for landlines.

DavRoopa

Dear Writer, you are full of sh!t..can’t say anything more than that

Guest

To Mr. Plafke: So you don’t consider the $300-$400 termination fee, levied by the carrier up early contract cancellation, a recoup of their subsidy costs? Regarding the other method, not paying your bill doesn’t get you out of the contract. If they can’t get your money owed, they start hurting your credit and then sell your debt to collection agencies, again recouping costs.

Both of these things are beside the point since the White House/FCC position is that you should be able to lawfully unlock your phone AFTER your contract with your service provider expires, which isn’t the same and terminating your contract for a large fee or not paying your bill. I don’t agree with your take in this article at all.

Guest

To Mr. Plafke: So you don’t consider the $300-$400 termination fee, levied by the carrier for early contract cancellation, a recoup of their subsidy costs? Regarding the other method, not paying your bill doesn’t get you out of the contract. If they can’t get your money owed, they start hurting your credit and then sell your debt to collection agencies, again recouping costs.

Both of these things are beside the point since the White House/FCC position is that you should be able to lawfully unlock your phone AFTER your contract with your service provider expires, which isn’t the same and terminating your contract for a large fee or not paying your bill. I don’t agree with your take in this article at all.

http://twitter.com/StevenS757 Steven

To Mr. Plafke: So you don’t consider the $300-$400 termination fee, levied by the carrier for early contract cancellation, a recoup of their subsidy costs? Regarding the other method, not paying your bill doesn’t get you out of the contract. If they can’t get your money owed, they start hurting your credit and then sell your debt to collection agencies, again recouping costs.

Both of these things are beside the point since the White House/FCC position is that you should be able to lawfully unlock your phone AFTER your contract with your service provider expires, which isn’t the same as terminating your contract for a large fee or not paying your bill. I don’t agree with your opinion in this article at all.

k.d. katz

smart phones – dumb consumers

preferthetruth

It seem pretty obvious that Mr James Plafke is out of his depth on this topic. He should leave this discuss up to people that understand the topic much more fully than he does.

So let’s think through what this decision means to the US cellphone market. It means that I legally cannot unblock a cellphone while in the US. But I can go to ebay and purchase an unlocked phone from anyone outside the US. I can also take my blocked US phone outside the US and unblock it then return to the US with the legally unblocked phone. I am sure there will be services where I can ship my phone somewhere and legally get it unblocked. So for it to be illegal to unblock my phone law enforcement would have to have legal proof of where the unblocking took place (good luck with that one).

Also if you are at the end of your contract you can demand the carrier give you an unlocking code or you will cancel the service. The carriers need you to stay with the service because the first two years with a subsided high end smart phone they at best break even on you as a customer.

Third no one believes the current Librarian of Congress, Dr James Hadley Billington age 83, should have any where near this authority. Also if we round up his age to 85 his risk for having Alzheimer’s is 43%. If he is to retain this power I think a mandatory competency review is very much in order. I would argue the post should be eliminated and authority transferred to a legitimate governing or regulatory authority.

Finally I would suggest extremetech find a more suitable author for articles on their website.

ease

The thing that kind of stung when I read this was about recouping
subsidized cost — yes the 7 companies that control the entire market,
rig all of the pricing and reap so much profit that the government has
to block mergers between them to prevent a complete monopoly need
protection from the consumers from the government. Are you a lobbyist for wireless carriers? Serious snake oil sale going on here… Nothing really else left to say that hasn’t been said in the comment thread other than the OP should reply. I never comment here, but articles like this hurts the legitimacy of the other pieces on this site. It is also amazing that on this site, of all places, an article like this pops up completely denying ownership as a key factor. smh

Shauri

It is hard to tell what things cost and what the market will pay with all of this subsidizing going on. Over the life of a two year carrier contract for a Verizon smartphone with data is a whopping $110/month. Over $2500 for 2 years. The service costs just as much as high speed internet+cable+phone in the home. If the subsidized phones were unbundled from carrier plans, I think both the price of the plans and the phones would go down.

EvilDaveCanada

In Manitoba Canada, we have a Provincial Law that requires ALL Cell Phone Service Providers to either unlock your Cell Phone at the end of your contract, after buying out thebalanceof your contract orat the time of purchase if no service contract is involved. Maybe the americans should look at working at the state level to take back consumer protection under these contracts as Contract Law IS NOT and HAS NEVER been part of Criminal Law.

BigRockr

Being a Verizon customer I would have to disagree with the article and with the “notion” that there is such a thing as a “subsidized” phone. Here’s how it works at Verizon. You have 4 aged phones (3-4 yrs old) with unlimited data for $40 . They offer an a many Gig shared plan, (more than Iuse by 2X) for $69. Wow! I will even save some money on this! I pony up $800 for the phones (supposedly “subsidized”). Total bill. $1029. Huh! and it will be way over $250 per month if everyone behaves. I tell the guy no way. His math is wrong. Turns out there is a $40 fee PER MONTH in addition to the $69 plan, PER PHONE just to have a Verizon cell phone! Yes there is a $40/mo. cell phone fee. For what?! Admin? Ha! Ha! Trust me folks, Verizon isn’t “subsidizing” phones any more. No subsidy exists. The article author’s argument is false because he is using a fantasy for use as a fact.

Dale Preston

As long as this author is with Extremetech, I’ll look for my tech news elsewhere. How much was he paid by the carriers? This reminds me of the New York Times story on the Tesla – it seems very much influenced by advertiser money rather than the facts.

Dale Preston

As long as this author is with Extremetech, I’ll look for my tech news elsewhere. How much was he paid by the carriers? This reminds me of the New York Times story on the Tesla – it seems very much influenced by advertiser money rather than the facts.

b9328

Capitalism works when there are lots of buyers and lots of sellers. In the US we have two sellers: Verizon and ATT. The continued hemorrhaging of customers by Sprint and little growth by T-Mobile show this. This market is broken and not just “capitalism” as you claim, so the gov’t interfering in this case is not really a big deal.

http://www.facebook.com/mike.godfrey.754 Mike Godfrey

Like many government interferences in areas which shouldn’t be its concern, this one is essentially unenforceable. There’s nothing to stop a consumer purchasing an unlocked multi region phone from China at a significantly lower price and no crime will have been committed. Like many legislators in the USA or UK they fail to think through the consequences of their laws just like that ridiculous one in Florida that now compels visitors with non US driving licenses having to obtain a international one instead.

Rusty Sawblade

Since when does the carrier(s) own something you buy and own? And what business is it of the Government, (FCC) to dictate what you buy and own. When the Government pays my bills then they can tell me what to do with my property.

http://www.cardinalphoto.com David Cardinal

Rusty–FWIW, governments tell us all sorts of things we can’t do with “our” stuff. Copy DVDs for example, or dump toxic waste in our back yard, etc. (not that everyone agrees they should have that right, but they do). That said, personally I certainly draw the line at telling me I can’t do something relatively harmless like unlock a phone. IMO it is an abuse of the notion of copyright and more evidence that the DMCA is a better hammer for large corporations than a real piece of public policy.

em2jac

You can’t honestly believe that these uber-companies are going to give up a single dime in order to save the consumer a few hundred dollars. They could give a new handset away with every new contract and make out in the end. The service is where they make their real money. The cellphone was never meant to become the domestic phenomenon that it has, with there being a device in practically every person’s hand. It was originally a tool meant for upper business execs to keep in touch with their companies and financial advisers. Unfortunately, the business oriented pricing scheme, both for the service and the hardware, has continued to present day and nothing is going to change until we force it to.

Anyone who believes that a cell phone with a 3 inch screen SD costs more to manufacture than a tablet with a 10 inch HD screen is either extremely naive or a fool. The same basic economic rule of supply and demand governs here. When demand is high, as in the cellphone, the product can be manufactured for less and sold at an increased price thereby maximizing profits. When the demand is low, as in the tablet, the product tends to cost more to manufacture and the final sales price must remain closer to that manufacturing price in order to maintain a market to sell to (unless the product is a pure luxury item or requires a great deal of skill or rare material to manufacture – then the sky’s the limit as your market has mad money).

Locking the phone is their way of maintaining control over the phone to ensure that it can not be used on another carrier’s system. This way when your contract is up and you decide to change providers due to the piss-poor service you received, you are forced to purchase a new phone, once again ensuring them a rediculous profit on that contract you sign for 24 months of what will undoubtedly be just as bad of service for a cheaply manufactured piece of electronics which they are claiming to sell you at a monstrously reduced price.

Truth be told, it is far cheaper for the carrier to maintain a cellular service than it is a land-line service. Think about. How many thousands of people can be serviced with a singular well-placed cell tower? 50-60,000? Who knows, it’s really a flexible number and not dependent on a direct connection. How many techs does it take to maintain that tower? 1 or 2 maybe. Verizon would have to maintain a fleet of trucks and several crews of men to take care of enough land-line connections to provide service to as many people. Yet we pay about $75 per month for unlimited national calling and internet service. That would be about $150 in cellular prices. Well over $200 for a family shared plan with two lines. Why the price differential? Greed and supply & demand.

The contract is the key. Once you sign the contract you ensure them 24 months of almost pure profit. Multiply that by the millions “serviced” by each of the carriers and you see why they don’t want you to be able to unlock your phone. It’s not for security reasons. It’s not to limit the speed of the phone’s processor(s) in order to protect the hardware from “catastrophic failure due to increased thermal conditions.” It all boils down to good old capitalist greed and it won’t change until we demand that it be changed.

http://www.cardinalphoto.com David Cardinal

FWIW, I travel to a number of countries where cellphones are sold unlocked & unbundled, often by the manufacturer (this includes several Asian countries) and they mostly aren’t any cheaper there than similar unlocked, non-contract models in the US (although there are often some inexpensive low-end models that we don’t get here). I’m not saying carriers aren’t manipulating the system in any way they can, or that there isn’t still something funky going on in those countries I visit, but removing the US carriers from the equation doesn’t suddenly cause a price collapse — otherwise I’d buy my phones overseas. Price of Google phones might be an interesting baseline. My GN was $349 when I got it, which seemed like a pretty good price for an unlocked, no obligation phone, and certainly less than similar phones with no contract from a carrier.

D.Engel

I don’t like the fact that a company can claim rights to something that I have bought out right, discounted or not. This is true for other devices as well, such as gaming consoles. You can get into all kinds of trouble for modding, altering or whatever with gaming consoles even if you own it. If I buy it, let me do with it what I want. If that includes getting rid of your bloatware on my phone, fine. I’m paying the carrier a ton of money every month just to be able to use the device in the first place and on top of that you tell me how to use it too? I’m the customer, i’m paying, I’ll tell you how I want to use it. That is customer service!!!

Sean Triglianos

This is a downright irresponsible article. I tried to get through the entire thing, but just simply couldn’t. This law was changed to increase profits to the telecommunications companies, nothing more. It’s so blaringly obvious I was shocked when I first heard it went through. The fact that our government passed this overwhelmingly one-sided law just proves two things; that lobbying works and that both our government doesn’t give a damn about it’s people.

The funny thing is, he’s right about one thing; the companies are doing nothing illegal, and honestly I think that is worse than if they were. The best way to control people is through their wallets, and there’s no way people will leave a telecommunications company now if they can’t bring their phone with them. It’s manipulation at it’s highest form and I find it utterly revolting.

If the authors of ExtremeTech don’t start increasing the quality of their articles I think I’ll be forced to find a new tech news outlet. Every week it’s more non-sense articles like this.

This whole situation the American people are in just makes me sad.

shanedr

All phones should be unlocked. Charge the customer for the service and let the customer buy the phone they like. Those contracts are simply monopolistic practices with zero benefit to the customer.

Vic Peters

They only give the discount on the phone if you sign up for a 2 year contract They know they are getting their costs back and the phone manufactures also give discounts to the companies. They only give you the discount for the contract. When you fulfill the contract they should no longer have control over your phone. If you leave early and pay the penalty, it is your phone, not theirs. They have gotten their money!!!!

Gabriel Saenzdeviteri

This guy is smoking some serious pot!!!!….and who ever allow him to write this article is on crack too!!!!……after I fulfill a contract…..the phone is mine!!! period

http://www.facebook.com/pete.wallace.144 Pete Wallace

Can anyone here tell me anything pertaining to altering tracfone internal settings to “not show minutes being used ? I was just ripped off for a years airtime and 3207 units that I paid for with no other explanation than “I modified my phone to not show minutes being used.” Funny thing is when I try to use the phone I get a message that it “has been deactivated to reactivate it with a credit card….” When I go through this message my phone takes minutes off of my airtime display and the days are counting down on my service. Why can I see this but not them?

I spent three hour on hold and being transferred back and forth between departments with no other proof than “you modified your phone.” I tried to ask them why would I spend three hours trying to get this addressed if I knew how to modify a phone I would just throw it away and spend $30.00 and modify another phone. The little girl couldn’t even answer that one.

I live in a very cell limited area and could get service from Tracfone for about $100.00 per year and I always carried over minutes from year to year, I only use the phone about ten minutes one day per week. They couldn’t answer my request that they check their records just told me “your phone was deactivated and that I could buy another phone and airtime card to return my service.” Do they really think they rip me off for $420.00 and I will still do business with them?

Does anyone know of other people having an issue like this and how they handled it? I emailed customer service and asked for an address so I could mail them the phone and they could check it and see I never altered it in any way, I don’t know how! If anyone has any info or advice I would like to hear from you. THANKS

Kevin Hyatt

What’s the punishment for this? I highly doubt anybody is going to federal prison because they unlocked their phone…

http://twitter.com/robertwoolley robertwoolley

Bizarre article. In the UK the networks will unlock your phone after a minimum period. You can go to a market stall and get it unlocked there. The phone belongs to you – not the network. If you have a handset subsidy there is no reason why a phone can’t be unlocked after the subsidy has been recovered.

jimerefaf

If you want a phone that’s unlocked buy it out right by the company that makes the phone.

jimerefaf

If you want a phone that’s unlocked buy it out right by the company that makes the phone.

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